Holocaust Memorial Is Closer to Reality in Amsterdam

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A model of Daniel Libeskind’s design for the Dutch national Holocaust memorial in Amsterdam. The monument is in the shape of the Hebrew word “Lizkor,” which translates to “in memory of.”CreditStudio Libeskind

By Nina Siegal

Dec. 16, 2016

AMSTERDAM — The architect Daniel Libeskind unveiled his design on Friday for a Dutch national Holocaust memorial in Amsterdam, to be laser-etched with the names of some 103,000 Jewish, Roma and Sinti residents of the Netherlands who were killed by the Nazis during World War II.

The names monument will consist of four walls made of red brick — a common material in Amsterdam houses — shaped into the form of the Hebrew word “Lizkor,” which translates to “in memory of.”

“They are four different sets of spaces, because each letter is a double wall, so that you can walk inside and outside,” Mr. Libeskind said in an interview after a news conference. “It’s like an intimate room, four intimate spaces where you can sit and reflect, and in each one there is a bench for meditation. There are trees, the reflection of light above you and the reflection of the city today, the sky, the birds.”

The site is in the center of the historic JewishCultural Quarter of Amsterdam on the east side of the old city, which contains the Jewish Historical Museum, the Portuguese Synagogue and the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theater that was used as a Jewish deportation center by the Nazis.

Mr. Libeskind used bricks as the foundation of the walls, while the Hebrew letters that sit on top of the walls are made of a reflective steel. “The Jews who were murdered lived in brick houses, as did the Gypsies, as did everyone else who lived in Amsterdam during that horrible time,” he said.

Mr. Libeskind, a Polish-American architect of the ground zero master plan in New York and the Jewish Museum Berlin, has long been part of a 10-year effort to build the names memorial at a site in Amsterdam, which was approved by the Amsterdam City Council in May.

Between 75 and 80 percent of the Netherlands’ Jews were killed during World War II, the highest rate in Western Europe. By comparison, neighboring Belgium lost about 40 percent of its Jewish population, and France lost about 25 percent.

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Daniel Libeskind has long been part of a 10-year effort to build the memorial in Amsterdam.CreditDave Yoder for The New York Times

“More than 71 years after the Holocaust, there’s no memorial in this city that is significant,” Mr. Libeskind said. “And if you think that the per capita murder of Jews in Holland was one of the highest in Europe, it’s time, it’s timely, it’s urgent. Especially now when we see the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, we see the attempt to delegitimize Israel. It’s not just about the past, it’s about the future and the present.”

Studio Libeskind’s memorial has been approved by the city’s landmarks board, but it still needs an environmental permit. The community will be allowed to comment on the environmental impact of the project, a process scheduled to begin in February and last eight weeks.

“I can’t imagine that anyone would not like this,” said Jacques Grishaver, chairman of the Auschwitz Committee, which led the fight for the memorial wall. He was born in Amsterdam in 1942 and was a “hidden child” during the war.

Each brick will be laser-etched with the name of a victim and date of birth and death. People who want to contribute to the project can “adopt a name” for the wall, for 50 euros, about $52.

“This is exactly what we need,” said Samuel Koopman, an 85-year-old Jewish survivor from Amsterdam who attended the news conference. He has adopted 29 names for the memorial wall; all of them became familiar to him when he was young, before the war.

“They were all people I knew: little babies, little kids, family members,” he said. “That was the amount of people that I remember as people. I talked to them. I touched them.”

The 102,000 names planned for the wall came out of a Dutch registry of known victims of the Holocaust in the Netherlands, but that list is probably incomplete, Mr. Libeskind said. That is why he has included an additional 1,000 blank bricks in the wall, which he believes will soon be filled with names of as-yet unrecognized victims.

“We know there are more names,” Mr. Libeskind said. “Because most of the families were exterminated, we don’t have all the names. Just in the process of building this, people will remember. It’s a way to make it contemporary, a way to make it living.”

Mr. Koopman said it would feel very different to be able to see the completed monument. “I’ll be so pleased if I’ll still be here, when it finishes. I hope to still be here so I can walk through it.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: Libeskind Unveils Holocaust Site Design. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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